PAGES
| PAGES | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Formed: | 1991 |
| Office: | Bern, Switzerland |
| Website: | www.pastglobalchanges.org/ |
The PAGES (Past Global Changes) project is an international effort to coordinate and promote past global change research in order to make predictions for the future. It involves more than 5,000 scientists from over 100 countries. PAGES' scope of interest includes the physical climate system, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem processes, biodiversity, and human dimensions, on different time scales.
History
Founded in 1991, PAGES was a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) until it closed at the end of 2015. PAGES is now a core project of Future Earth.
PAGES is funded by the (US) National Science Foundation and Swiss National Science Foundation(s), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is overseen by a Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) composed of members chosen to be representative of the major techniques, disciplines and geographic regions that contribute to paleoscience.
Goals
The primary objective is to improve understanding of past changes in the Earth System in order to improve projections of future climate and environment, and inform strategies for sustainability. PAGES supports research aimed at understanding the Earth’s past environment in order to make predictions for the future. It encourages international and interdisciplinary collaborations and seeks to involve scientists from developing countries in the worldwide paleo-community. PAGES' scope of interest includes the physical climate system, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem processes, biodiversity, and human dimensions, on different time scales — Pleistocene, Holocene, last millennium and the recent past. PAGES itself is not a research institution, but rather helps to develop common international science directions to ensure that important scientific questions are addressed in a coherent manner. Based on input from its multidisciplinary community, PAGES works to identify and understand those aspects of past climate and environmental change that are of greatest significance for the future of human societies.